Homoeroticism is sexual attraction between members of the same sex, either male–male or female–female.[2] The concept differs from the concept of homosexuality: it refers specifically to the desire itself, which can be temporary, whereas "homosexuality" implies a more permanent state of identity or sexual orientation. It is a much older concept than the 19th century idea of homosexuality, and is depicted or manifested throughout the history of the visual arts and literature. It can also be found in performative forms; from theatre to the theatricality of uniformed movements (e.g., the Wandervogel and Gemeinschaft der Eigenen). According to Oxford English Dictionary, it's "pertaining to or characterized by a tendency for erotic emotions to be centered on a person of the same sex; or pertaining to a homo-erotic person."[3]

Though homoeroticism can differ from the interpersonal homoerotic — as a set of artistic and performative traditions, in which such feelings can be embodied in culture and thus expressed into the wider society[4] — some authors have cited the influence of personal experiences in ancient authors such as Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius in their homoerotic poetry.[5]

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The term "homoerotic" carries with it the weight of modern classifications of love and desire that may not have existed in previous eras. Homosexuality as we know it today was not fully codified until the mid-20th century, though this process began much earlier:

Following in the tradition of Michel Foucault, scholars such as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and David Halperin have argued that various Victorian public discourses, notably the psychiatric and the legal, fostered a designation or invention of the "homosexual" as a distinct category of individuals, a category solidified by the publications of sexologists such as Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840–1902) and Havelock Ellis (1859–1939), sexologists who provided an almost-pathological interpretation of the phenomenon in rather Essentialist terms, an interpretation that led, before 1910, to hundreds of articles on the subject in The Netherlands, Germany, and elsewhere. One result of this burgeoning discourse was that the "homosexual" was often portrayed as a corrupter of the innocent, with a predisposition towards both depravity and paederasty—a necessary portrayal if Late-Victorian and Edwardian sexologists were to account for the continuing existence of the "paederast" in a world that had suddenly become bountiful in "homosexuals." (Kaylor, Secreted Desires, p. 33)

Despite an ever-changing and evolving set of modern classifications, members of the same sex often formed intimate associations (many of which were erotic as well as emotional) on their own terms, most notably in the "romantic friendships" documented in the letters and papers of 18th- and 19th- century men and women (see Rictor Norton, ed., My Dear Boy: Gay Love Letters through the Centuries, Gay Sunshine Press, 1998). These romantic friendships, which may or may not have included genital sex, were characterized by passionate emotional attachments and what modern thinkers would consider homoerotic overtones.

Female homoerotic art by lesbian artists has often been less culturally prominent than the presentation of lesbian eroticism by non-lesbians and for a primarily non-lesbian audience. In the west, this can be seen as long ago as the 1872 novel Carmilla, and is also seen in cinema in such popular films as Emmanuelle, The Hunger, Showgirls, and most of all in pornography. In the east, especially Japan, lesbianism is the subject of the manga subgenre yuri.

In many texts in the English-speaking world, lesbians have been presented as intensely sexual but also predatory and dangerous (the characters are often vampires) and the primacy of heterosexuality is usually re-asserted at the story's end. This shows the difference between homoeroticism as a product of the wider culture and homosexual art produced by gay men and women.

The most prominent example in the Western canon is that of the sonnets by William Shakespeare. Though some critics have made assertions, some in efforts to preserve Shakespeare's literary credibility, to its being non-erotic in nature, no critic has disputed that the majority of Shakespeare's sonnets concern explicitly male-male love poetry. The only other Renaissance artist writing in English to do this was the poet Richard Barnfield, who in The Affectionate Shepherd and Cynthia wrote fairly explicitly homoerotic poetry. Barnfield's poems, furthermore, are now widely accepted as a major influence upon Shakespeare's.[9]

Letters can also be potent conveyors of homoerotic feelings; the letters between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West, two well-known members of the Bloomsbury Group, are full of homoerotic overtones characterized by this excerpt from Vita's letter to Virginia: "I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia [...] It is incredible to me how essential you have become [...] I shan't make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this --But oh my dear, I can't be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that." (January 21, 1926)